


i'll pretend that you were just some lover

by softresurrection



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Cousin Incest, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pregnancy, Sansa-centric, the only characters are jonsa thats it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 01:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15546570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softresurrection/pseuds/softresurrection
Summary: The winter takes the remainder of Sansa's innocence with it.





	i'll pretend that you were just some lover

**Author's Note:**

> title from arctic monkeys ‘love is a laserquest’

Sansa herself helped in the cleaning of the castle. Winterfell wasn’t what it used to be, it never would be again. She’d said goodbye to her parent’s Winterfell, the home of her childhood, when the wights had attacked the first time. That day, it too had become a battlefield, just like the rest of Sansa’s life. Most of the good men and women who had worked at the castle upon her return were now dead.  
Sansa couldn’t help but draw a correlation between her and death. Maybe the Stranger had claimed her for his own the first time she had escaped his clutches and now laid waste to any lives that protected hers.

Those lives had saved her own. They had saved the castle, and the children- most of them, anyway- and some of the women, too. Only four men were left alive at Winterfell, when all the wights had been slain with dragonglass.

In the end, the ones left alive were all right there with her, cleaning up the ruins of home. Sansa took a second to catch her breath, before she leaned down again to pick up her rags and basket of rubbish. In the beginning, her pregnancy had excused her from some of the strenuous tasks but since the battle three moons ago, Sansa had thrown caution to the wind and started helping properly to clean up.  
She still couldn’t lift heavy things properly, but in the bottom of her heart, her treacherous blood sang that it was better if she did lose the babe. Only sadness would follow her child, as it had her, and she couldn’t take the burden of another life ruined onto her own shoulders. The babe’s father had left the night it was conceived, off to fight the final battle, and she hadn’t heard from him since. 

She had heard about the queen with the dragons, however. Yes, Sansa had heard much praise of the woman who stood on the frontlines against the undead. Alongside her Jon. The woman who gave him comfort. Even Sansa, even the bitter woman that life had forged from it’s cruel fires, could not fault her lover for finding peace in the arms of the only woman who could understand him.  
The only woman who shared his blood. The helpless child in Sansa’s heart, the one that cried when her direwolf died, wanted to scream ‘He’s my blood too! You might be a queen, but I love him!’ The woman in her, the one who cried at night when she understood her own subconscious trying to make her lose her child, the woman who had lost her love and her family, that woman gritted her teeth and murmured assent to the people who praised the Dragon Queen and the Prince who was Promised. 

At night, she prayed for him. She let her sobs wrack through her body, burying her face in her pillows and crying until she felt drained enough to go to sleep. Samwell had told her that it was more of a surprise that the babe was alive than it was that it existed. The constant work, the fatigue, the malnutrition, the shock from every man dead. Even though all factors indicated otherwise, Sansa’s babe lived.  
Sansa hadn’t shared Sam’s delighted surprise, she knew the spirit this babe would have. It would have the constant clawing survival instinct of it’s mother, and the neverending struggle to not let anyone down that it got from it’s father.

No, Sansa wasn’t surprised. The reaction she had gotten when her pregnancy started being apparent had not been what she expected. Sansa’d realized then that if this babe lived, it would be more than her child, it would be a beacon of hope for the North. She would get official legitimacy status for her babe, no matter what it took. If it survived, her babe would have the seat that her father did, maybe the one that her brother did.

Beautiful, lovely Robb. Her tragic brother who she left with melting snowflakes in his hair, with the hope of childhood still in his eyes. She had known him as a boy, the King in the North. She missed him as a boy. She missed him as the young child who played with her even when Theon declared that he had gotten ‘too old’ for playing.

Sansa would give this babe the childhood she had never gotten. She would let her child be whoever he was. She knew, in her heart, that it was a boy, She carried the exact same way her mother had with all the boys. Maybe that was why she wanted to end his life before it started. No boy she knew had remained a boy for very long. They either died young or grew into men long before they should have.

The babe’s father had grown up faster than most. Jon, unloved Jon, always the one who had to fend for himself. He didn’t even know that his seed had quickened in her belly. He’d refrained from taking her properly before that night. 

That night, though. That night might have been worth all the tragedy that followed. The heat in his eyes, the way they were locked onto hers the entire time. The kisses he had lain on her war-stricken body, the warm press of her mouth against where his heart was, where his scars were. The way they hadn’t been able to control themselves, not from the first second she’d seen him that night. The night he’d whispered his love in her ear and kissed her neck as he pushed deeper into her, as if to stay. 

Sansa could have stayed in that moment forever. She had been so full of her love for him, and so overcome with sorrow at his leaving, that she’d cried. 

She wondered if Jon remembered that. Did he think about her even once? Sansa scoffed at herself, when would he have had time to think of her? In the throes of his passion with his Targaryen lover, or in the midst of fighting wights?

Sansa knew she couldn’t hold him to that expectation. She had comforted him before battle, and in that battle, he had found his fate with Daenerys. Instead of hating him for finally finding his true love, she would have to love him for the moments he had given her. For the babe that he had given her.

That was what she told herself as she readied herself for Jon’s arrival. With her ghostly skin and protruding stomach, she was hardly beautiful. Pregnancy and starvation had both taken from her alleged beauty in equal parts. If she had ever held a candle to Queen Daenerys’ famed beauty, she surely didn’t now.

Yet, Sansa was the Lady of Winterfell. She was the Lady Paramount of the Vale. She was the Wardeness of the North. She would not present herself in her odorous rags. After taking a scalding bath that warmed her bony frame, Sansa pushed herself into a severe, gray dress that did not clash with her pallid complexion so terribly. She pinched her cheeks and applied raspberry tint to her lips. She braided her hair. Her thick red hair that Jon loved open so terribly. The end result was not so bad that she would be thought of as a joke. She was to be the second most powerful woman in the kingdom, an image was to be maintained.

Then, she sat herself down on her bed, forcing herself not to cry. That wasn’t something she could do during the daytime. The people of Winterfell needed hope, and who better than her for that.  
A girl flew into her room after a hasty knock, “My lady, the royals have arrived!” She ran out just as quickly. She’d used to be Sansa’s handmaid until it had been decided by the lady herself that she could do without.

Sansa sighed heavily before putting a mask on her face. As she stood up, her head spun a little. The walk to the courtyard was enough to take the edge off of her headache. All the members of the castle stood there, Sansa at their front. Soon, a black dragon circled the air above her. To her credit, Sansa restrained the fear in her and settled for putting a protective hand on her belly.

As the beast landed on the ground, Sansa adjusted her cloak, getting ready to greet the Queen in the South and the King in the North. Daenerys descended from the beast first, swiftly jumping off and walking towards her. She was clad in heavy boots and breeches. Warrior’s clothing. Sansa silently cursed at herself for dressing up. The woman probably thought that she was a scared little girl who had locked herself up in her castle.

Sansa cleared her throat, not willing to look intimidated. She curtsied, a bit stilted but her pregnancy gave her enough excuse. Not that the heavy cloak around her body let the outsiders know about her swollen belly. “Your grace.”

Daenerys nodded at her. “Lady Sansa. Your cousin missed you.” The words were said in a tone that implied that she didn’t understand why her nephew would miss the girl standing in front of her. Neither woman smiled at the other.

“I missed him too, your grace.” Sansa drew herself to her full height, several inches above the Dragon Queen. Her height didn’t give her the advantage of beauty, however. Whatever Daenerys was, she sure was beautiful. Her eyes didn’t carry emotion, however. That was the one thing that made Sansa want to leave her company the most.

Over the woman’s shoulder, she noticed a man unmount the dragon. He was as comfortable with it as he had been with Ghost. Sansa’s heart deflated a little then. The man she loved had been no friend of dragons.

Jon walked towards the pair of unspeaking women swiftly, almost running, only stopping when he was within a few inches of Sansa. It was all she could do to not flinch backwards.

“Sansa.” He breathed, his expression wondrous, his voice soft as fresh snow.

She couldn’t help herself, she leaned towards him, forgetting the presence of every other soul there. “Jon. You’re here.”

He grinned wide then, lunging towards her in one large step. In her trance, Sansa forgot that she hadn’t planned to let Jon find out about the pregnancy until they were alone. All of Winterfell knew by now, there was nothing to hide there, but there was danger from Daenerys. In jealousy, she might not let Sansa’s little boy be legitimized.

As he hugged her, Jon moved his body forward to align themselves together but was stopped by the giant obstacle of the babe that had been resting in her belly for six moons. He stopped in his tracks, his expression a flat face of shock. As he moved the cloak, Sansa finally realized what was happening, too late.

As she stepped back, her face apologetic, wrapping the cloak around herself again, she didn’t let herself look at Jon’s stricken face.

“Your grace, let me show you to your room myself. Fresh baths will be drawn for you and your… army? Are there people coming by foot?” Sansa spoke solely to Daenerys, letting Jon stand still in shock in front of her.

Daenerys looked even less amused by her now that she knew of the babe in her belly. “Yes, there are men arriving soon. By tomorrow, at the most.” She moved forward, presumably to let Sansa to lead her to her room. “Your husband is also coming, Lady Sansa. Soon. His own dragon perished and he wouldn’t ride another of my children so soon.”

Sansa forced her face to keep from contorting into a grimace at the word ‘husband’. “Our marriage has been annulled by the High Septon, my queen. Has Lord Tyrion not let you know?”

Daenerys only gave her another inscrutable look.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sansa lowered herself down into her bath. The water made her skin itch but her aching muscles relaxed in the bask of the heat. The babe also liked the heat, she could tell. She had not seen Jon the entire day. Despite feeling ill all day, she had consulted with the stewards about the food supplies they had left and the functionality of housing the remains of Daenerys’ entire army. Then, she’d helped with cooking and finally drawn up her own bath. 

Dinner would be in another hour, which was enough for Sansa to soak and let her tired body uncoil.

Or it would have been if there wasn’t a loud, impatient knock on her door. Before she had turned the visitor away, Jon pushed his way into the chamber. His mouth was open, as if to speak, but the King was staring fixatedly at her stomach in the water. He walked closer, slowly, before dropping down on his knees at the edge of the bathtub. “It’s mine, isn’t it Sansa?” There was an urgency in his voice. “Please tell me it’s mine.”

Sansa hadn’t been planning to reply but she could not stop herself. “Whose could it be, Jon? Of course it’s yours.” He voice was as tired as she felt.

Jon’s eyes held tears in them, “I promised I wouldn’t father any bastards.”

“Don’t you dare. My child isn’t a bastard. He’s a product of love, and he’s a Stark. You were a Stark to me, Jon, and so is your son.” Sansa replied indignantly. She would not have her babe’s heritage questioned.

His cheeks were wet, tears rolling down freely. “I can’t- I cannot believe that you’re going to have my child. I thought that was a dream my mind let me have to stay sane during the war.”

Sansa felt her own eyes getting watery. Her naked form in the water didn’t bear her to Jon as much as the tears in her eyes did. “Don’t worry, Jon. I’ve instructed all the people of Winterfell to never reveal the babe’s father to one of the Southerners. Daenerys will think it was some other man. I’ll tell her I got married secretly before the war and the babe’s father died.”

Jon looked into her eyes questioningly, then shocked. “Why would you say that, Sansa? I’m the king now, this child will be my heir!”

She scoffed through her tears. “As if your lover would accept that.” The vitriolic way she said the word ‘lover’ made Jon’s eyes widen.

“Daenerys? How could you think that? I told you I loved you before I left. Or is my love that fickle to you? They were battlefield rumours, Sansa, and they stayed rumours.” Jon looked hurt, his eyes shifting from her belly for the first time since he’d entered the room.

Her whole body flushed from shame, although she tried to cover it with scorn. “Are you sure? Daenerys seems very angry with me for nothing to have happened between you.”

“Dany-“ He quickly stopped his sentence at the rageful look Sansa threw at him. “Daenerys, my aunt, is a complicated woman, Sansa. I won’t lie, she did propose marriage to me very early on. I rejected her proposal right then, and I told her the truth, Sansa. In a way, I rejected two proposals at once. She wants for you to get remarried to Tyrion. That’s why she was cold. I’ll talk to her about it.”

Sansa sputtered, “She can’t honestly expect me to remarry him! I was forced into a marriage with him as a child when his family had just killed everyone I’d ever loved. Even if he was kind to me in small ways, I would only relive that trauma with him. I don’t love him, Jon. Don’t make me marry him. Please.” She could feel herself getting more hysterical with every word.

“Of course not, my love. I told her no. Right then. I’m the only one who’s going to marry you.” Jon moved his hands to her submerged shoulder, kneading at the skin with his knuckles to provide comfort. 

She took a deep breath, then, letting herself take the air in. It was the first satisfying breath she’d taken since she’d watched Jon ride away six moons ago. She kept her eyes closed as she whispered, only for his ears in a room with just the two of them. “I missed you so much, you know. I dreamed about you. I thought about you constantly. I thought I knew pain until the battle happened, and I was alone, and I almost lost the babe, did you know? So many times. I had to help, though, Jon. You weren’t here. I missed you the most that night.” Sansa knew she barely made sense, but it felt soothing to acknowledge her pain. It felt real. The past six moons had passed like a nightmare.

Though her eyes were closed, she could feel Jon’s body wracking with silent sobs beside her. Her heart ached at the thought that she’d caused him pain. He’d had enough pain. They both had.

Sansa stood up, feeling the water drip from her body. Before she could shiver as the cool air enveloped her naked body, she turned to Jon, stepping out of the tub. She grasped his hand and pulled him towards the bed behind her. When they reached, she pushed him forward first before softly sitting down beside him, keeping her hand on her stomach that prickled with gooseflesh.

“I love you. I’m as in love with you as I was six moons ago, as I was before that, as I have been since the night you arrived at Castle Black.” Jon’s voice still sounded choked but his hand snaked around Sansa’s own, gently pulling her back to lay down next to him.

As she lay down at his side, her head burrowed into the warmth of his neck with his hand immediately covering her stomach, Sansa felt at rest for the first time in a very, very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> banged this out at 3 am in like two hours. not beta'd or even read by someone else so........ im sorry, i guess. here, have this


End file.
